pond-mud are not very valuable as marketable
fertilisers; but is there no difference between
plain river-mud and the constant contributions
of three hundred thousand houses?
The rivers of China are pure, and may
be bathed in satisfactorily, because dirt
and offal are too valuable to be thrown away;
they are reserved to fertilise the hard
rock and the barren sand. An instructive
example lies much nearer home; a tour in
Flanders, at the seasons of sowing and planting,
is an excellent lesson to those who have
eyes to see and memories to remember. A
naturally fertile district has its fertility
doubled and maintained, by the economy and
application of what we do worse than reject
by converting it into a national abomination.

A certain college in one of the universities
had (and has still) a large lawn, or small
park, whereon the grass uprose so sturdily
as to interfere with the pacings to and fro of
reverend and learned feet. The wages of
mowers and the cost of scythes made a serious
inroad on the revenues of the college, ample
as they were. The grass cut in the morning,
had grown again by night; the grass cut in
the evening wanted cutting again by next
day noon. It was a Sisyphæan and
endless task, still beginning, never ending. At
last, one of the senior fellows, after deep
reflection, proposed to hire from one of the
college tenants a flock of sheep to eat down
the troublesome grass. To oblige his
landlords, the tenant consented. As soon as one
flock of sheep were tired of eating grass, and
were fit for the butcher, he sent another, and
then another. Things went on thus for some
time, to the mutual satisfaction of all parties.
The members of the college could walk on
their lawn without being up to the knees in
herbage, and at every audit the tenant
pocketed a pretty little deduction from his
rent. But, one day, the college butcher let
slip the secret that the fellows had lately
been feasting on mutton fed and fatted on
their own luxuriant lawn. After further
reflection, the seniors proposed to the farmer
that the sheep should eat the grass gratuitously,
without being remunerated for their
trouble. This, after much grumbling and
hesitation, was accepted, entirely and solely
to oblige the college. But, by and by, a
junior fellow, of agricultural parentage, came
to have a voice in the college business; and
he made a motion to the astonished
combination-room that the sheep should have no
more gratuitous bites, but that the farmer
should pay a fixed rent for the pasturage.
If he did not choose to take it on those terms,
there were others who would. The farmer,
with sundry grimaces, consented, begging at
the same time that he might have the
preference, as a recompense for the ready way
in which he had hitherto met the wishes of
the college.

A certain city has a market-place which
has passed through exactly the same financial
phases as the college lawn. In one
generation a head-sweeper was paid to sweep
the place clean, after market days. The
next generation found his successor sweeping
it for nothing. The present and future
generations are and will be witnesses to the
fact of the sweeper's buying the sweepings
which he was once paid to sweep, and of
removing them at his own expense.

The refuse of the cities of London and
Westminster will pass, we venture to
predict, through exactly the same ascending
scale of commercial value. Manure
merchants, who will have nothing to do with
them now, will hereafter be bidding against
each other for the privilege of working so
rich a mine. What a practical inconsistency
and absurdity it is to send ships to fetch
guano from South American islands, when a
metropolis is imploring assistance, from any
quarter, to relieve it of the elements of which
guano is composed!

MY LADY LUDLOW.

CHAPTER THE SIXTH.

"ALL night Madame de Créquy raved in
delirium. If I could, I would have sent for
Clément back again. I did send off one man,
but I suppose my directions were confused,
or they were wrong, for he came back after
my lord's return, on the following afternoon.
By this time Madame de Créquy was quieter;
she was, indeed, asleep from exhaustion when
Lord Ludlow and Monkshaven came in. They
were in high spirits, and their hopefulness
brought me round to a less dispirited state.
All had gone well; they had accompanied
Clément on foot along the shore, until they
had met with a lugger, which my lord had
hailed in good nautical language. The
captain had responded to these freemason terms
by sending a boat to pick up his passenger,
and by an invitation to breakfast sent through
a speaking-trumpet. Monkshaven did not
approve of either the meal or the company,
and had returned to the inn, but my lord had
gone with Clément, and breakfasted on board,
on grog, biscuit, fresh-caught fish—'the
best breakfast he ever ate,' he said, but that
was probably owing to the appetite his
night's ride had given him. However, his
good fellowship had evidently won the
captain's heart, and Clément had set sail
under the best auspices. It was agreed that I
should tell all this to Madame de Créquy, if
she enquired; otherwise it would be wiser
not to renew her agitation by alluding to her
son's journey.

"I sat with her constantly for many days;
but she never spoke of Clément. She forced
herself to talk of the little occurrences of
Parisian society in former days; she tried to
be conversational and agreeable, and to
betray no anxiety or even interest in the
object of Clément's journey; and, as far as
unremitting efforts could go, she succeeded.